And it doesn't hurt that the job fair is being held in January, when transplants from warmer climates may be tiring of the frigid temperatures and might find Texas to be a breath of fresh air.

Travis Bullard, a spokesman for GlobalFoundries, says he's not surprised that Samsung would be targeting the company's back yard for employees.

"It's actually a perfect example of how competitive our industry really is," Bullard said. "There's a lot of competition for top talent. These guys are hard to find."

GlobalFoundries has hired nearly 2,000 people at Fab 8. About half are local, but the company had to search worldwide for people with experience building a new computer chip factory from the ground up. Many have come from Austin, which has a large semiconductor manufacturing and design community.

Dan Medlin, a recruitment leader for Samsung's Austin operations, said that it is "a very normal part of our business" to go to areas of the country where there is a "density" of semiconductor employees to recruit. Samsung held a job fair in Dallas last month and is planning job fairs in Arizona and New Mexico where Intel has manufacturing operations, next month. However, upstate New York is the farthest away from Austin of any of those locations. And clearly, the company wouldn't mind being able to interview people who work at Fab 8.

"Certainly some folks who have worked there would be interested in an opportunity to meet with us," Medlin said.

Local economic developers said that Samsung's job fair is a sign that the Capital Region has become a worldwide semiconductor center. And it's not just because of GlobalFoundries or the NanoCollege. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy does a lot of semiconductor research, as does General Electric at its global research center in Niskayuna.

David Rooney, senior vice president of business development and marketing says he expects to see more events like the Samsung job fair to occur in the future. And it will happen so often, it won't seem like the novelty it is now.

"Samsung's recruitment efforts are yet another indication of the increasing prominence of upstate New York and the Capital Region within the global semiconductor industry," Rooney said.